Flash Fiction

Were you the one … Flash Fiction

Were you the one …

… were you the one who awoke that morning at my side and heard with me the hammer blow fall on an echoing anvil in Oaxaca, in the central square when the rope slipped off the church bell and the priest and an altar boy, an acolyte dressed in black and white with a nut brown face, climbed into the church tower and when the priest said “now” the little boy struck the hammer against the bell’s anvil and “again” said the priest, and “again” and the cracked church bell lurched into its hourly cry of grief and morning, seven blows on the anvil, and a stray dog barked at those domestic birds whose beaks dug deep for the sun at dawn on our neighbor’s rooftop …and a cockerel cried out in the early morning, “cock-a-doodle doo, wake up you sleepy heads, wake up, do,” and the roosters found daylight buried in parched earth, and brought it skyward shining on their beaks, as thin cracks sprang out from the egg-shell sun like crazy paving as the yellow yolk of sunshine crept out from the cobbles down in the street and the Russian egg cup, doll after doll, unfolded daylight as the hammer’s silver spoon descended once more on this frail, egg shell world as our dreams shattered … and where now are those dreams of moonlight raked from a village pond as the orange spilled its life-blood to fill our crystalline goblets with its thick rich morning liquid as fierce and sweet as sunshine sacrificed on a branch and rain from a far-off cloud speckled the tree outside our window with radiance and a thousand rainbows all held in tiny diamonds that balanced and swayed at the branch’s edge then trickled and fell to form freckling pools between the cobblestones and even there the arco iris was multiplied, again and again, a thousand times … and the restaurant next door, with its semi-circular rainbow scarf and below it a painted deer on a decrepit wall, and Cuauthemoc was here, his burnt feet held to the fire that burns within us all, and that mangled man was nothing more than a string quartet of flesh and bone created from a ball of dough and baked in the oven in an earthenware dish with currants for eyes, a raisin for a belly button, lemon rind for a mouth, orange peel for hair, while the white bones stared stark naked from the burnt-out flesh at the end of his perished feet … and the man in the mirrored moon held up his hand to trap the wind as a falling leaf settled in the secret web between index finger and thumb and the cat’s cradle on his fingers bound us together like birds in a spun metal cage … the sparrow’s mighty choir chirped at the roof of the circus tent and animals ran wild all goosey, goosey gander, up and down, and nowhere can I now find my lady or her chamber, for they have gone, and with them went all hope, and hope being lost I ran in circles on the sand, my one foot dragging me inwards, and drawing me closer, ever closer to the rising tide, as night overwhelmed day, and dark soldiers invaded the shadowed beach, and where, oh where, did my little dog go, the dog I lost when he chased a seagull out into the bay and into the quicksand and he never came home and here I am alone in my loneliness wandering like a lost dog in ever-decreasing circles, round and round the central square, without you now, one step, two steps, and who will now tickle me under the chin with a buttercup, and who knows if I’ll ever eat butter again, as the tide climbs higher and the sea grass on the dunes is smooth and brown and cuts like glass with its withered, distorting mirrors of stark, staring eyes standing out in welcoming doorways with dark hands and even darker voices calling me in, again and again “are you looking for love, my love?” and yes, I am, I do seek love, I have always sought it, but I have sought it out in the open street, in the open square, in the fresh air, or indoors, where incense and candles burn, and the sun of god is nailed to his lump of wood or chained to his pillar and the Roman soldiers raise their whips to their lips and their kiss is the kiss of death, and I still search for love and my long lost dog as black eyes penetrate from the blackest paint where Satanic witches spoon salt soup between wrinkled lips, dark open holes for their mouths, and their eyes gouged pits in slatted, wooden faces, and they hover over the deaf man’s table in La Quinta del Sordo or stand shoulder to shoulder with Adam and Eve next door in Hieronymus Bosch’s bourgeois hell of furnace, flame, and factory, where the hot flesh catches fire as the feet are turned to the flame and Cuauthemoc burns, the whole world burns, and my soul catches fire as factories swarm with sparks of black imps, burning, dropping from the skies like fire-flies tumbling in a satanic dance, falling away from the heavenly meadow, lighting a way to the skies and the devil, too, is lost and bewildered, a Guy Fawkes impaled on his wooden stake at the bonfire’s tip and it’s November the Fifth, and the whole world is full of spinning star-sparks burning their Van Gogh holes through the black velvet fabric of the dark night of my still-suffering soul …

Comment:
This is a re-write of what I posted earlier today. It is the same piece but it is slightly shorter, more polished, and better focused. It also now has a clearer narrative line with less jumping between metaphors and a cleaner, clearer sequence.

Claustrophobia

Claustrophobia

“I’ve got to get out of here.”
“Why?”
“I can’t breathe.”
“Where are we going?”
“Anywhere.”
“Are we going to Gran’s?”
“Why not? Yes. Pack your bag.”
“What about Dad?”
“What about him?”
“Aren’t you going to tell him where we’re going?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because he doesn’t care. If he cared, he’d be here.”
“Maybe he’s had an accident?”
“He didn’t have one last night, or the night before. He just doesn’t care.”
“We can’t just go …”
“We can.”

She called a cab and when it came, they turned the lights out in the house, and shut the front door behind them. Then they got into the cab. The cabbie turned to her and spoke over his shoulder.

“Merry Christmas, and where would you be going, Ma’am?”
“The station.”
“Bus or train?”
“I don’t care. They’re both the same.”

The cabbie shrugged and pulled away from the kerb. The bus station was closer and that’s where the cabbie left them. Mother and son stood there for a moment, under the station lights, looking at the coaches that squatted there, parked in regular lines. Then, mother and son, they walked into the ticket office.

“What time does the next bus leave?”
“Where do you want to go?”
“Home.”
“Where’s home?”
“Swansea.”
“The next bus for Swansea leaves in twenty minutes.”
“We’ll take it.”
“Single or return?”
“Single. Two tickets.”
“You should buy a return ticket; it’s cheaper.”
“We’re not coming back. Not this time.”
“How old’s the boy?”
“Seven.”
“He can travel half price.”
“One and a half then, singles.”

It was December 23rd, her own mother’s birthday. Mother and son sat together on the dark, empty bus. The cold seats chilled them as they waited in silence. The boy looked out the window and coughed.

“Will Grampy be there to meet us?”
“No.”
“Doesn’t he know we’re coming?”
“No.”
“Does granny know?”
“No.”
“Mum, why are we going?”
“It’s granny’s birthday today. We’re going to give her a surprise.”

Two hours later, the bus deposited them in Swansea. The night had filled with heavy clouds and promised snow.

“Can we take a cab. mum?”
“There’s none here. We’ll have to walk.”

They walked side by side down the well-known streets. Christmas lights adorned the shops and they walked through alternate pools of light and darkness.

“Mum, I’m tired.”
“Give me your bag. We’re nearly there.”
“But mum …”
“I can carry both. Hold on to my arm.”

They kept on walking. After a while, they stopped beneath the streetlight outside the old family home and looked up into the street light’s glow. The first snow-flakes danced down.

“Can we go in now, mum? I want to see Gran and Gramps.”
“You go in. I’ll be with you in a moment.”

She watched her son climb the steps to the front door. He lifted the old brass knocker and banged it down. After a moment, the front light came on and the door opened a crack. She stood beneath the street lamp, inhaling, taking the chill air deep into her lungs. She felt the tight bands in her chest start to loosen. For the first time since this time last year, she felt free

Warning to the reader:
Raw material, still under revision, and probably needs lots of revising. I look forward to your comments. In some ways, this is my take on A Child’s Christmas in Wales. Not quite how Dylan Thomas saw it; more a sort of … well, you work it out for yourself!

Structure in the Short Story

Structure in the Short Story
Wednesday Workshop
30 November 2016
Posted: 4 December 2016.

I just attended, with one of my writers’ groups, a writing workshop offered by a guest speaker. Our speaker threw out some interesting ideas on structure in general and structure in the short story in particular. The first comment he made was “Are you sure that your novel is not a short story and vice versa?” He then suggested that often beginning writers run out of steam because their novels are not really novels but are short stories that need cutting, rather than expanding.

He followed this up by suggesting, and I made no notes so I write from a memory that fails me more often than it used to, that a short story should have a structure that runs something like this:

stasis > key occurrence > end of old world (stasis broken) > beginning of new reality (the world upside down) > quest (the search for new balance) > climax (when all the events of the crisis come together) > the moment of truth (when the central character is faced by a decision) > the choice (the protagonist chooses) > pay-off for protagonist (order is restored and the protagonist is changed or confirmed by his choice) > pay-off for readers (who see that change and are themselves changed by looking at the same old world through different sight and a new knowledge or insight gained).

One of the group members circulated his notes from the workshop and summarized the idea rather more succinctly:

The first thing I remember … in any story, the main character has to be changed at the end from what s/he was in the beginning.

The other item was the list of elements in a story: Stasis, Trigger, Quest, Surprise, Critical Choice, Climax and Resolution.

Clearly this is a theoretical structure, but many short stories follow it or versions of it. Through this structure, our speaker suggested, there often runs a leitmotiv and this can provide a thematic unity that also holds the story together. Returning to this thematic unity and writing selectively from within it, can often produce the desired change in reader and protagonist. Equally clearly, there is no length to this structure and the resulting story may be very brief or suitably enlarged.

According to our speaker, the character of the protagonist is very important and the key aspects of the protagonist’s character must be clearly drawn, right from the start. The protagonist must also go through some sort of change as the story and the protagonist’s character both develop. Place is also important and the protagonist should be linked into a place and preferably a time. The protagonist in the short story is, after all, in a dialogue with his time and his place (his chronotopos, as Bakhtin would phrase it).

This is certainly a prescription for short story writing, one of many prescriptions, I might add. A quick search turns up another definition, this time of a five-point narrative arc offered by Mark Flanagan:

“Sometime[s] simply called “arc” or “story arc,” narrative arc refers to the chronological construction of plot in a novel or story. Typically, a narrative arc looks something like a pyramid, made up of the following components: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution.”

Flanagan continues with a definition of each moment in the story. Exposition reveals the characters and the setting. Rising action is a complication that hinders the protagonist. Climax is the point of highest stress or tension. Falling action is a releasing of the pressure and the resolution ties up all the loose ends. (Taken from this site)

http://contemporarylit.about.com/od/literaryterms/g/Narrative-Arc-What-Is-Narrative-Arc-In-Literature.htm

Lope de Vega, the Seventeenth-century Spanish playwright, suggested a simplified three-part structure: situation > complication > unfolding / dénouement. Of course, the complications may be multiple, resulting in an action that runs situation > complication > further complications > complicating the complications > even more complications > even more complicated complications > and then the final unraveling of the ‘by now very twisted’ plot. An even simpler two-part definition, also from Spain’s Seventeenth-century, offers us the dual structure of a ‘world in disorder’ > ‘a world in order’ — how the characters progress from disorder to order is up to you as a writer.

Of course, the author may decide NOT to tie up all the loose ends and re-order the world to perfection. When this happens, we may have a dystopia: the disaster continues; or we may have an open ending that prompts the reader to wonder what might happen or what might have happened. As for ‘beginning at the beginning,’ there are also stories that begin in the middle (in media res) and then go backwards in time before going forwards again. This raises the awkward question: how short is a short story? I won’t attempt to answer that one here.

Whether you describe or prescribe, there are many possibilities in the world of short story telling and it is always the story that counts. If it is good, then perceived structural flaws that go against these prescriptive methods may well become a prescriptive structure for another future writer. Interior monologue and dream, for example, linked thematically but not necessarily linked in time and space, may well distort or destroy yet another structural format, that of the three classic unities of time, place, and action. these, incidentally, are expanded into four by the great Spanish playwrights (among others, I am sure) who add unity of theme to the other three.

Robin Grindstaff, in an online article entitled “Narrative Arc: what the heck is it?”, available at

http://robbgrindstaff.com/2012/03/narrative-arc-what-the-heck-is-it/

suggests yet another simplification and reshaping, of the narrative arc idea.

“Think of narrative arc as a bell curve. It starts at a point on the lower left hand side of a graph, rises in a curve to a peak, and then drops back down again. The standard narrative arc is often referred to in terms of the three-act play: a beginning, a middle, and an end.”

This is not unlike the structure outlined by Lope de Vega, except for the fact that ‘middle’ is a rather inadequate term for the multiple complications outlined in the Lope de Vega model. This statement may be a little unfair as Robin Grindstaff goes on to outline the complications that may occur in the second act in the following fashion:

“In act two, the main character must try to overcome the conflict presented by the inciting event. The character wants something, has a goal in mind. The conflict and tension of the story rise, and obstacles are thrown in the path of the character to prevent her from achieving her goal. The character faces these obstacles on her way to overcoming the conflict. The obstacles get bigger, more difficult, and the character may be on the verge of defeat or surrender. At this point, the character must make a critical decision or a moral choice that changes the direction of the story.”

Clearly the ‘obstacles that are thrown’ compare favorably with Lope’s consistent throwing of obstacles and ‘middle’ therefore becomes a euphemism for ‘complications.’ Act three allows for the climax and resolution of the story and this includes character change or ‘death in defeat’ and tragedy. I recommend this article very strongly, as it goes way beyond the outline I have offered thus far and clarifies many features of the narrative arc.

In fact, Grindstaff then references Nigel Watts, Write a Novel and Get It Published, and outlines an eight-point narrative arc that runs

stasis > trigger > quest > surprise > critical choice > climax > reversal > resolution.

This runs a close parallel to the circulated list (quoted earlier) of seven elements:

Stasis > Trigger > Quest > Surprise > Critical Choice > Climax > Resolution.

The main difference being the insertion of a reversal between the climax and the resolution.

So, we have now established an narrative arc, or a pyramid, with 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 or 8 steps included within it. This is all very prescriptive: do it and you will succeed. My greatest fear then becomes the gate-keepers, those anonymous figures who sit on shadowy selection committees, place ticks in appropriate boxes, and judge the quality of writing by consensus in committee. I can hear them now: “#7 is missing. There’s no reversal. Reject!” “I don’t like #5. The choice isn’t critical enough. Reject!”

As writers, we must remember that all these arcs and numbers are just theories. The most important thing is the command ‘Take up thy pen and write’! All the theory in the world does not produce a good short story or a good novel. In fact, the opposite may be true: too many rules may stifle our narratives at birth or choke them to death My advice: know your theories, then smash them into little pieces and create the new structures, the new formats, the next new great piece of writing that will lead you, as a writer, to boldly go where no writer has gone before.

Blessings, happy writing, and follow your creative instincts.

Dream of Oaxaca

Dream of Oaxaca

I can bring you a Bird of Paradise, but I cannot bring you the sounds and smells of Oaxaca. The pungent odour of the first drops of rain falling into dry dust, the tang of waxen candles burning in the cathedral’s dark, the high notes sung at the altar by the old woman, dressed in black, who sings each day, on her knees, before the golden images in Santo Domingo: these sounds and smells defy any words I can pen. Nor can I place on the page the bustle of the abastos, the bickering of rooftop goats, the barking and growling of the dogs who patrol the azoteas at head-height and snap at your ears. Other things escape me: the salty taste of sweat, the heat and heaviness of the midday sun as its hammer falls vertical from the sky, the sandpaper touch of hand-hewn stone, cobbles hard beneath the feet, the visual impact of the revolutionary bullet holes still scarring the church where Benito Juárez got married and reminding the tourists that violence in Mexico is never far away. The silk smooth threads that run through the vendor’s carpets contrast violently with the harsh sharp tares still lodged in hand carded wool. Colors and scents: coffees and chocolates blending and blended in the open air-market, the spice stall with a hundred different kinds of peppers, the golden yellow flower of the gourd — flor de calabaza — as it floats on the surface of spiced soup or lolls luxurious upon Oaxacan cheese or tortilla and quesadilla. Such things are the substance of daily reality: I remember them well, but I cannot gift you with their taste, nor their smell, nor their sound. At night, strings of fireworks hang down the cathedral’s towers and, at the spark of a match, these castillos as they call them, burn. Cataracts of light flicker and flow as rockets claw upwards into the sky to knock on the doors of the slumbering gods. A bull’s head, attached to a wooden frame, bears fireworks that crackle and spurt fire as the bull charges at the gathered crowd. Sparks char cotton and wool, young girls shriek and flee, a striped, carved tiger emerges sparkling from the shadows and his eyes light up with another set of fires … But there is always something missing from these words. How much can I describe? How much am I forced to leave out? How close can I get to an imagined reality that is more imagined than real, more creation than memory? I live in a world that has forgotten poetry. I live in a world that has laid aside the great myths and replaced them with a media that misleads and falsifies. I live in a world in which the power and glory of words is used not to delight and educate, but to manipulate. I live in a treacherous world of lies and deceit, the world of Descartes’s evil genius, for not everything is as it seems to be and the people have been misled. But this world of ours is old, and older, darker powers than ours still dwell on this earth: a pinch of salt thrown over the shoulder, index finger and thumb pinched into a magic circle that wards off the evil eye, the traditional hunchback – el jorobado –, carved from jade, who packs our cares and troubles into his hump and carries them away … as I have been carried away, on this tide of creation that ebbs and flows, a virtual sea, a wave of autumn leaves that washes up to my door, then falls asleep, golden, brown, peaceful in the vacuum that is left by the wind’s sudden absence. So, for a while, after you have read these words, avoid all shadows, do not step on the black lines that divide sidewalk and pavement into squares, do not crush the elf’s dry bones hidden in a fallen leaf, avoid black cats, make sure the crow flies on the correct side of the road … then find a quiet corner of the street where the leaves dance to the wind’s tune, and fall asleep to re-create your own life in dreams.

Questions

Questions

I hear her voice, delicate, distant and I run to the sound, jump on the table, and sit in my usual spot just beside her play thing, but she isn’t there. He’s there, damn it, talking away on that little black thing with buttons. I can see him, smell him. I hate him, his other sex perfumes, his heavy-footed shuffle, his loud voice, his walking-sticks. I run when he approaches, run and hide myself away, making myself small, fitting under furniture where he can’t get at me, trying new places, new spaces …

Downstairs in the basement is good. He has problems with the stairs – shuffle, shuffle, clump, clump – and I get plenty of warning. Not that he ever comes downstairs to the basement. There’s nothing down here for him and I can sit here and snooze and dream and wait for my darling to come back. She will come back. I know she’ll come back. I know she’ll never abandon me, like she’s abandoned him. I am faithful, I can wait.

Besides which, I am training him. It takes time, but he’s beginning to understand that he must do things my way now. I chat him up for food and whisk myself around his legs and down comes the kibble, like manna from heaven. He often spills the food, so I get extra bits, nipping in quickly while he searches for a broom or a dustpan, or that noisy sucking thing I hate so much. That’s not just him, I run when she uses it too: it hurts my ears. And my feelings: I think they’re shooing me away because they don’t want me near. Not that I want to be near him, oh no.

I stay away from the upstairs and the bedroom while he’s here alone. Sometimes we meet on the stairs when I have completed my ablutions, but I give a little shimmy and scoot and leave him star-struck and stranded. He’s just not quick enough. He’s not cruel, mind. He doesn’t kick me or hit me with his stick or anything like that. I just don’t like men. I remember that other man, the one that beat me before she came to the place with all the other cats and cages and took me home. I think all men are like that first man, if you give them the chance, and I’m not giving this one a chance, not until I’ve trained him properly. And he isn’t trained yet. I wonder how long I’ve got?

There he is, hanging on to that little black thing, and when he stops talking, I can hear her beloved voice. It’s distant and a little bit tinny, with a sort of echo, and there are other sounds in the background that I can’t quite make out, but it’s her, I’d know her anywhere, and I whimper and scratch, and he puts down a hand in my direction, but he doesn’t tempt me, and then he holds that black thing down and she calls me by my favorite names and I sit there, silent, and gaze into space, remembering her touch, her gaze, her hand upon my neck, my back … no, I won’t let him that near me, not yet.

Yesterday, he sat at her place by the table and turned the picture machine on. Then shadows appeared and her voice came out of the machine. The shadows moved and played and people chatted back and forth and I didn’t understand it, I just didn’t understand. My whiskers stiffened and I sat there and bristled. The machine was warm and I snuggled up to it, behind the flat piece, where I could listen but he couldn’t quite touch me, even though he stretched out his hand. And she called my name, again and again, but I didn’t move, I just sat there and sat there, waiting.

Then I came to the front of the machine where the shadows danced and her voice was stronger. A shadow, I couldn’t make it out, then her voice again, my whiskers stiffened, I leant forward and sniffed, but no smell, it was her voice, and the shadow shifted the way she does, but they had no smell, and scentless, I could not really sense her, I bristled and she called me, called me by my favorite names, and mewed, I mewed back.

But I couldn’t smell her, and there was no sense of touch … is this the hell all pussy cats will suffer … shadows on a screen, a haunting voice, memories shifting and dancing, no touch, no hugs, no sense of smell … and nothing solid … just shadows and absence … and a sense of chill … forever and forever?

Absence Makes the Heart: Flash Fiction

Absence makes the heart …
Flash Fiction

Time on my hands: so precious these moments alone, with my wife gone away to visit our daughter and our grand-daughter. I didn’t want her to leave me here alone. But I thought she needed the break, the space, and I also thought the women needed time together without the troublesome presence of a man. So many ideas flow back and forth when the man isn’t present, ideas that women share and debate, female anxieties that they will not discuss in front of the male, questions of children and development, teething and first words, actions and reactions, left-handedness and right-handedness, backwards and forwards skills that they will not discuss with the same comfort if the man is there.

I miss her. The sun filters through the kitchen and the autumn leaves store up sunlight like an old precious wine before they fall. Wine: I sip slowly at this bottle filled with life and sunshine, bottled sunshine they call it in Spain, sol embotellado, and I know that although I am alone, my friends are there, at the end of the telephone line. I can call them if I need them and anyway, they call me often or drop in once or twice a day to make sure I am okay. If I walk around the block or knock on their doors I know I will be greeted with warmth, an arm around the shoulder, the offer of a meal.

Thanksgiving is near. I already have two invitations for dinner and another lady, much lonelier than I am, has offered to buy the Thanksgiving food, bring it round, and cook it for me. She will also clean up after wards and leave the house cleaner than when she arrived. Can you believe it? I get company, companionship, and no, they are not the same thing, a cooked meal, and a house clean all together. It’s like winning the lottery.

But really, I prefer this solitude, my adventures with the cat, my slow stroll, not through the autumn woods, but through the leaves of this book. I like exploring my own mind, linking myself now to the self I was when I first read these pages and yes, there have been crises, and there will always be crises, and this is not a crisis, not yet anyway.

I remember when I was in boarding school. First day back from the holidays, I would draw a railway engine, and a train track, and I would number the days until the holidays came around again. For the first few days, I would cross off each day. Then, one day, as the new routine took control of my mind, I would forget to do so and the days would all blend into each other.

The new routine: get up earlier than usual. Go down and feed the cat. Make sure the cat had water. Change the kitty litter and make sure that her litter box is clean. Hoover around the litter box and pick up all the spilled litter. Place used litter in the garbage. Put the cat garbage on one side ready for Monday morning when the garbage men come around. Finish with the cat. Wash hands carefully. Then wash them again.

Downstairs I go. I put the kettle on and debate what I shall have for breakfast. Tea or coffee? Cereal or eggs? Muffins or toast? Breakfast for one is so simple. I take the easy route. Green tea with honey, no milk, no sugar. Some yogurt. Some grapes.

I sip my tea and thumb the pages of Carl Jung’s book, The Undiscovered Self. I love her and miss her so much, but I am glad she has gone. Her absence allows me to re-discover my own presence. I learn about myself once more. I remember who I am and what I am and how I survive when I am on my own, abandoned, set adrift to fend for myself.

I get up from the breakfast table, look around the house, and find my Teddy Bear. The cat will not come near me, so Teddy it is. I set him on the table next to me and tell him all my news. Then I tell him what is happening on the news. Together, we sit and wait for the phone to ring. If she doesn’t call soon, I’ll call her myself. But not yet, not just yet: I’m still discovering my undiscovered self.

In Absentia 4

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In Absentia 4
Kibble

I pick up the cat’s bowl with the claw and place the bowl by the cat food. No kibble. So, holding the blue plastic measuring spoon in one hand I take my two canes and balance the spoon between my right thumb and the cane handle. Then I limp down the corridor to the laundry room where I store the kibble. I fill the measuring spoon from the packet, reseal the bag, pick up my canes and wedge the now full measuring spoon back between thumb and cane handle. The cat mews happily and runs out between my legs. I lurch and … disaster … the spoon slips from my arthritic fingers and the kibble forms neat, rolling patterns on the floor.

What can I do? I think immediately of the Dyson and limp into the hall where I have left it. I extend the handle, hold the handle with my right hand, cane and all, and push the Dyson down to where the cat is feasting. I plug the Dyson in and switch it on. One rumble from the Dyson and the cat abandons the kibble and seeks the safety of the basement. I manoeuvre the Dyson toward the cat food but the Dyson is in carpet mode. It beats the floor and will do nothing but push the kibble before it. I push the kibble into a neat pile and leave it there. As I turn the Dyson off, the garden kneeler catches my eye. I go to fetch it and balance it against my leg, kicking it forward so it won’t catch against my canes and trip me.

I have brought the cat’s bowl with me this time and I kneel before the kibble. Then I start picking the pieces up, one and two at a time. My back aches from the slow bending and twisting and my heart is breaking as I consider my own stupidity. Hot tears of frustration prick at my eyes and I blink them away. This operation is so long and so slow. I slip forward and place my hand palm down on the kibble. My palm is sticky with sweat and I raise a handful of kibble as I push myself up. This I scrape into the cat bowl. Using this new technique, I transfer the kibble stuck to my hand first to the cat bowl and then to the measuring cup.

It’s time to get to my feet. I cannot heave myself up on the garden kneeler’s handles and hang on to the cat food: too much risk of a second spill. I have leaned the claw against the all with my sticks so using both hands on the kneeler handles I struggle to my feet. As I do so, I knock both canes over. Now they are lying flat on the floor with the claw. The canes have a rubber tip and if I stand on the edge of it, the cane will rise in the air like magic. I do this twice. Then I use the canes to grasp the claw and the claw, now in my possession, to raise the cat food. Success!

I struggle my unbalanced way down the corridor, place my sticks on the counter, put the right amount of kibble into the cat’s bowl and, with the cane, lower the cat’s food to the floor. I glance at my watch. This operation has taken me fifteen minutes, half of which I have spent kneeling on the floor. I call the cat. The cat appears. I reach for my canes. The claw falls to the floor. I grab for it and knock down one of my canes. The cane strikes the cat who is greedily feeding. The cat jumps away and spills her water all over the floor.

I stand there, horrified. Hot wet tears of humiliation trickle down my face.

Teddy Bears FFF

Teddy Bears
Friday Fast Fiction

Now they sleep in separate rooms in single beds each tucked in with a monogrammed teddy bear.
He likes to cuddle his, keeping it warm, tucking it carefully under the bedclothes. He calls it Ready Teddy, and his favorite game, especially in summer, is to hold his teddy bear by one back leg and say in a loud voice “Ready, Teddy, GO!”
At the word “GO” he hurls his teddy bear skywards and takes great delight in the fate of a sleeping fly, pinned against the ceiling and squashed. His delight doubles if one of the pointed waves of ceiling paint impales the fly and leaves it squirming there, buzzing impotently. This means target practice and he hurls Ready Teddy, “GO, GO,” skywards again and again until the unfortunate fly, falling like a condemned angel, tumbles back to earth.
She still follows the same ritual as when they were sleeping together in the same bed. First she pummels the pillows, fluffing them up with sideways movements of the hands. Next, she lays them on the bed and beats them flat. Then she picks them up and plays them like a concertina, pushing them together then stretching them out again. As for her teddy bear, she likes to discipline it, to beat it into shape. Once upon a time, it made noises and let out little squeals and squeaks, but the constant violence has silenced its sound box.
When they slept together she often took her teddy and beat it against her husband’s head. He would wake from the deepest dream head a-throb, ears and cheeks stinging, as she flailed him with her teddy and struck him blow after blow. When his headaches grew worse, they decided to sleep apart. He felt it was better and safer that way.
Last night, she sleepwalked into his room, and sat on the side of his bed. She clasped her teddy by the feet, a rabid Rottweiler with a rag doll, and thumped her teddy’s head against her husband’s face again and again.
The sleeping tablets had made him drowsy and slow to wake. His wife kept up the barrage until he finally woke, eased the teddy bear from her grasp, and walked her back to bed
On the way back to his own room, he checked into the bathroom and examined his face in the mirror. Blood seeped from his nostrils. He had bruises under his left eye and his cheeks glowed red where veins had broken near the surface
Next morning, he sat at the breakfast table, his grandfather’s First World War magnifying mirror in his hand, and examined his face. The ice pack had taken effect and he looked less damaged now. He reached for the color correction cream in the packet beside him and read the directions with care. Then he placed a tiny drop of the magic serum onto the paintbrush and worked the correction cream over the marks on his face. He watched them disappear one by one. Now he would be ready to face the world.
He stared into the magnifying mirror gazing deeply into his own eyes. Was that how it had happened? Or had their first child really fallen downstairs, banging her little head on each wooden step at eighteen months old?
The inquest had been inconclusive, his wife held blameless. They had remained childless after the trial.
Was that a blessing or a curse?

Apologia FFF

Apologia
Friday Fast Fiction

Late last night, I opened Alistair Macleod’s book The Lost Salt Gift of Blood and I re-read the first story. I was soon dabbing my eyes with a tissue and blowing my nose.
This morning, I want to destroy everything I have written. I know I don’t possess the verbal and emotional genius of the great writers and I sense that I will never be able to write like them. Graduate school taught me to be passive, not active, and to write impersonally, choking every emotion when I write. Academia also taught me how to kiss and how to run away with my thirty silver pence. “Never challenge the status quo,” my professors told me. “Learn the rules and disobey them at your peril.”
But here, in this private space where I create and re-create, there are no rules. The enemy is not clear any more and the fight is not one of black against white. It is rather a choice between diminishing shades of grey, and all cats are grey in the gathering dark that storms against my closing mind. Should I destroy all my writing? I won’t be the first to do so; nor would I be the last. And I won’t be the first or the last to destroy myself either. Intellectual, academic, and creative suicide: as total as the suicide of the flesh.
I carry on my back the names of those who have gone on before me as if they were a pile of heavy stones packed into a rucksack that I carry up a steep hill, day after day, only to find myself, next morning, starting at the bottom once again. But this is not the point: the point is that if I cannot write like the great writers, how can I write?
I think of Mikhail Bakhtin and his cronotopos, man’s dialog with his time and his place. I have no roots, no memories, and that is where my stories must start: in the loss of self, the loss of place, the loss of everything. I was uprooted at an early age, soon lost my foundations, was sent into exile, and only survival mattered.
I look at the first page of one of my manuscripts. My writing manifesto is clear before me: “And this is how I remember my childhood,” I read. “Flashes of fragmented memory frozen like those black and white publicity photos I saw as a child in the local cinema. If I hold the scene long enough in my mind, it flourishes and the figures speak and come back to life.”
I am aware of the words of T. S. Eliot that “every attempt / is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure / because one has only learned to get the better of words / for the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which / one is no longer disposed to say it” (East Coker).
Are my stories an exercise in creativity or are they a remembrance of things past? How accurate is memory? Do we recall things just as they happened? Or do we weave new fancies? In other words, are my inner photographs real photographs or have they already been tinted and tainted by the heavy hand of creativity and falseness?
The truth is that I can no longer tell fact from fiction. Perhaps it was all a dream, a nightmare, rather, something that I just imagined. And perhaps every word of it is true.
I no longer know.

St. Christopher: Flash Fiction

St. Christopher

“Well,” I said to Luis, “if you wade through that river and get yourself soaking wet when there’s a perfectly good bridge to walk on, you’re stupid. That’s all I can say.”
He didn’t reply and we both stood there, glaring at each other. Then I looked down at the cobbled road that led to the bridge. The stones, turned on their edges and woven into herring bone patterns, looked as though they had been there since the beginning of time. The bridge was clearly the work of the Romans rather than the Devil, the Devil’s Bridge, as the locals called it, built by the Devil himself and joining the two banks of a river that God had placed there to separate one side from the other.
“I’m going over the bridge,” I said.
“And I’m wading through the river, however deep it is.”
“It’s not that deep,” I replied. “It’s only up to the waists of the fishermen in their waders. You’re not taking that much of a risk.”
“It’s not a question of risk. It’s a question of honor and loss of honor.”
“What do you mean, loss of honor?”
“You know what I mean. I have lost my honor and somehow I must win it back.”
“By wading across a river, barefoot, with your clothes on, when there’s a perfectly acceptable bridge set here especially for pilgrims?”
“If necessary, yes; that’s what I must do.”
“Necessary?” I exclaimed. “There’s nothing necessary about it. You’re just being stubborn; and stupid.”
“I don’t think I’m being stupid.”
“I’m beginning to wonder if you are even thinking.”
Luis looked at me, hard, then started down the little path that led to the river.
“I give up,” I said. Then I turned away and walked to the bridge. I stopped when I was half way across and looked back. Luis had descended to the riverbank. He was talking with a young child who stood there, gazing at the moving water. Then I watched him as he picked up the child, placed him on his shoulders, and waded slowly into the river.
There was a sudden shout from one of the fishermen, and a washerwoman, washing her linen on the far side, to which Luis was headed, ran to where Luis was forcing his way slowly through the waters with the child on his shoulders.
“My son,” she cried out. “¡Hijo mío! Where is he taking you?”
“Everything’s fine,” Luis shouted back. “He just wants to visit his mother and I’m bringing him across.”
Just then, Luis stepped into a pothole in the river. He stumbled and the child almost fell from his shoulders. Luis staggered for a pace or two, then straightened up and continued across the river.
“A saint,” the child’s mother called out. “You stumbled yet did not fall: you must be a saint.”
“St. Christopher has come back to us,” another washerwomen crossed herself and the two of them knelt. I looked at Luis, wading through the river, and I knew for certain that if he wasn’t mad now, he soon would be. I watched as he reached the shore and handed the child over to its mother. She asked for his blessing, but he shook his head and refused to bless her saying that he was neither a priest nor a saint but just a poor sinner who could give a blessing to no one.
I walked down to the end of the bridge and waited for Luis to catch me up. Ahead of us, the cobbled road led to the church and to another cruz de harapos. We walked forward together, him with his wet clothes and his watery footprints, and me with my clothes all dry. When we got to the stone cross in front of the church, Luis stopped and gazed at it, raising his eyes up from the base and looking up towards the heavens. Then he moved forward, climbed onto the cross’s plinth, and stood there, just below the level of the stone arms. Three of the washerwomen had followed him. One was the mother of the child that Luis had carried across the river and her child was beside her.
Luis turned to face the cross. Then he raised his arms above his head, jumped upwards into the air, and clung on to the cross with both hands, his feet suspended about six inches above the ground.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I asked him.
“I’m hanging myself out to dry.”
“You can’t just hang there.”
“Why not? Jesus did.”
“You’re not Jesus.
“And the cross isn’t wooden and nobody has nailed me.”
“You’re going mad,” I told him.
He raised his eyes skywards muttering a prayer and refused to look down at me.
“Father,” he said. “Father: why hast Thou forsaken me?”
The three women stood at the foot of the cross, gazing at Luis who was hanging there, dripping his drops of water onto the stone.
“Send someone to fetch the local priest or the doctor,” I said to one of them. “This man’s gone mad.”